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Description

Imagine you are playing chess. As you think about your next move, you consider the outcome
each possibility will have on the board, and the likely responses of your opponent. Your knowledge of the
board and the rules constitutes an internal model of the chess game. Guiding your behavior on the basis of model-predicted outcomes of your actions is the very definition of cognitive planning. It has been known
for many decades that humans and animals can plan (Tolman, 1948), but the neural mechanisms of planning
remain largely unknown. Recently, a powerful new tool for the study of planning has become available:
the ‘two-step’ task introduced by Daw et al. (2011). This task allows, for the first time, the collection of
multiple trials of planned behavior within a single experimental session, opening the door to many new
experimental possibilities. We have adapted the two-step task for use with rodents, and developed a semiautomated
pipeline to efficiently train large numbers of animals. Here, we show that the rodent two-step
task reliably elicits planning behavior in rats, and we characterize the role of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC)
in this planning behavior. We find that inactivations of OFC substantially impair the ability to plan, and that
single units in OFC encode planning-related variables, such as the values associated with actions taken at
each step in the two-step task. These data demonstrate the OFC is crucial for planning, and begin to shed
light on the computational role that it plays in the planning process.